Roads

Road transport was the means of movement for about 93
percent of freight and 95 percent of all passengers. In
l991, in addition to the l3,000 kilometers of all-weather
roads, of which about 4,000 were asphalted and 8,900 were
all-weather gravel roads, there were 4,900 kilometers of
rural dirt roads, making a total of nearly 18,000 kilometers
of all types of roads. Centered in Addis Ababa, the road
system radiated in all directions in a spoke-like pattern.
However, substantial parts of the country, notably in the
west, southwest, and southeast, still lacked all-weather
connections to this network. Only about l2 percent of the
population had ready access to roads. Most roads in the
national network were concentrated in the central, eastern,
and northern highlands.

During the 1936-41 Italian occupation, road building
increased. Mobility helped Italy consolidate its rule over
Ethiopia, initiate development projects, and pacify unstable
areas. By l94l there were about 7,000 kilometers of roads,
of which about half were surfaced with asphalt. After
liberation, road construction and maintenance stagnated
because of a lack of funds, equipment, and expertise until
l95l, when the government established the Imperial Highway
Authority. With the help of World Bank funds and with
technical assistance from the United States Bureau of Public
Roads, the development of Ethiopia's highway system
continued.

The Imperial Highway Authority played a major role in the
construction of roads until the revolution. The Derg
restructured the Imperial Highway Authority as the Ethiopian
Road Authority and the Rural Roads Task Force. The
government created the latter to develop rural roads outside
the main system and to extend feeder roads within the main
system. The World Bank, which had financed four previous
highway programs, funded this project. In addition, the
African Development Bank and the EEC provided assistance for
road construction and maintenance. Despite these efforts,
Ethiopia's road network remained primitive and quite
limited, even by African standards. This shortcoming had
tragic consequences during the 1984-85 famine, when the lack
of good roads contributed to Ethiopia's inability to
distribute food to famine victims. As a result, many
thousands of Ethiopians perished. In 1991 completion of an
adequate nationwide highway system continued to be one of
Ethiopia's major development challenges.

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